Python has overtaken JavaScript on GitHub

Python has overtaken JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub, while the use of Jupyter Notebooks also has skyrocketed on the site. The rise of both underscore the surge in data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning on the code-sharing platform, according to GitHub’s just-released Octoverse 2024 report.

Python is used heavily across machine learning, data science, and scientific computing, among many other areas ranging from web development to home automation, GitHub found in its report. The growth in Python usage coincides with open source activity continuing to extend beyond traditional software development, GitHub said. Along with increased Python adoption, GitHub also sees increased interest in AI agents and smaller models requiring less computational power.

The Octoverse 2024 report was released October 29, and covers GitHub data from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024. GitHub in its research found a different notion from expectations that AI would replace developers. “As AI rapidly expands, developers are increasingly building AI models into applications and engaging with AI projects on GitHub in large numbers. At the same time, we’re seeing an unprecedented number of developers join GitHub from across the globe,” GitHub said.

The top 10 developer communities on GitHub from 2019 to 2024 were in the United States, India, China, Brazil, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, and Canada. But Africa is nurturing growing pool of developers, GitHub said. In addition, GitHub found that, in 2024, developers globally made nearly 1 billion contributions to open source and public repositories across GitHub.

In the security realm in 2024, developers across GitHub used CodeQL secret scanning to detect more than 39 million secret leaks, GitHub said. The most-common security vulnerabilities found were injection, broken access control, insecure design, and cryptographic failures.